


It is what we've been dealt

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Incest, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-23
Updated: 2012-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-30 00:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is marvelously ordinary, in her boatnecked t-shirt and denim skirt, black leggings fraying just a little and worn sneakers with new laces. Her hair is clumped with hairspray and her foundation flakes at the tip of her nose. She leans her weight on her right leg, just like you, and sucks on her cheek in a way you know will end up leaving tiny sores that sting next time you eat.</p><p>You wonder what she sees when she looks at you, if she zones in on the symbol on your chest or the pimple on your forehead, if she measures you both on a scale or places you side by side without comparing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It is what we've been dealt

**Author's Note:**

> For [Mona](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mona/pseuds/Mona).

You didn’t know you could still dream.

You didn’t know you could still sleep to see things other than coiling flesh and icy smoke, the damp chill of ancient exhale on your face and neck. Limbs conducted by the screaming in your head, thrashing in the void, against the crushing weight of nothingness.  

You spent a long time in the dark behind your eyelids.

Tonight, your dreams are made of light.

 

\--

 

The afterimage of your land greets you with the amicable pitter-patter of raindrops against the roof of your once-home. Sunshine coats the clucking waves, twinkles up at you and generously adorns you with its pastel reflections.

You stand on top of the observatory and turn around slowly, let your eyes glide over the white shores and golden clouds, the leafless trees pointing their naked, scraggy branches to the sky. The calm surprises you. Awake, your memories are filled with crackling majyykk and fretting turtles, the pressure from silent explosions and the vicious claws of imps slashing the air only inches from your bare arms, but in your dreams the Land of Light and Rain stretches before you without any tears in its shimmering fabric, untouched and serene. Though you don’t deserve it, you’re glad this is what you get to keep.

 There are things that don’t belong. A hurricane of fire will whirl across an island, circle the temple of some amphibian deity, rage quietly to itself for a minute or two and then fade with not so much as a thin trail of smoke to call back to its existence.  In the distance tower skinny mountains crowned with cutlery, you can make out the utensils for a tea party of giants, but the shapes are vague and hazy as if seen through many walls of dusty glass. A whiff of fragrant chamomile carries on the breeze. Bubbles collide and blend, bounce off each other to continue their aimless journey through the emptiness where dreamers dwell. They all pass by, the disturbances are fleeting. You turn your back to each of them, and soon enough you’re once again alone with your images of peace.

Only not this time.

This time you see her while she’s but a dot on the horizon in the shade of the planet that watches over you always, and you know that she has passed you by before. You have felt her presence in other bubbles, always at the edge of your consciousness, keeping just out of sight. You no longer have to look to see, but yet you have glanced behind you – always a second too late.

She is before you now; you monitor her gradual approach with your hands neatly folded and your heart in disarray.

There are things that you don’t touch. There are thoughts you tuck away in the secluded corners of your mind that are still inky black and echoing with whispers in tongues you shouldn’t know. These are thoughts that reek of blood and taste of tears and sound like your own voice screaming at the injustice of loss. They bear down heavily on you sometimes, these thoughts, they cover your eyes with cold hands to obfuscate your path. They make your stomach churn because you remember all too clearly the even edges of the incision from which the life was drained.

She is nearer. You can make out some detail on her short dress, clothes you know the feel of very well, the cut and the color comfortable and comforting. Familiar, too, but in another way, is the sheen of her hair, the slant of her nose, the shape of her chin. Her posture is slack with sleep, but you recognize it with the clarity of dreams, the surefire dictation by your subconscious.  

You rise up to meet her.

There are things that you want. When you find yourself idle and whatever you would use to occupy yourself with irritates you for no reason, they make themselves reminded through the invisible iron grip suddenly squeezing your trachea and making you gasp for air in the middle of rummaging through your yarn basket. They manifest as faint but inconvenient tremors in your fingers when you take up the pen. There is an ever present question at the tip of your tongue that you can’t find the words to voice. Something clogs your veins and slows your circulation, you orbit around the same dark center until time ceases to exist and you get stuck in front of the mirror with the door locked, whether cursing or pitying your reflection you’re not sure.

She looks very much like you.

This close you can count every freckle on her light brown skin, the shade identical to your own. You do your makeup the same way – gel liner quirking upward, no mascara on the bottom lashes, carefully contoured lips –like you learned to mimic years ago. Her curves are more defined but you were built after the same blueprints. If you want to know the texture of her hair and skin, you need only raise a hand to yours.

Suspended in the air by the upheaval of gravity you have already become blasé about, you watch her. She is a little taller than you, but not much, and up here you are on the same level, face to face. You look at her and look at her and look at her, like you could drink her up with your gaze.

And as you look at her, her eyelid flutters. And as it does, so does your heart.

Her eyes open slowly, bit by bit. You keep still, keep fixing her, keep waiting for the moment when she blinks away the residue from rest smudging her corneas and you come into focus. Every breath you take is shallower than the one before.

She lifts her head.

The bubble pops.

You wake with a start to drab concrete walls, your vision still swimming with light.  

 

\--

 

You feel very calm. It surprises you.

She keeps her hands by her sides, as do you. Your shadows are short and sharp. Her features look slightly different from in your dreams, they have the hard edge of reality, but she still catches your gaze and holds it until your skin tingles from the intensity.

She is still beautiful, you find yourself thinking. The narcissism would embarrass you, were you not so preoccupied memorizing her. Despite the tangibility of her appearance, despite the solidity of the floor below your feet and the walls encasing you, she seems fleeting. It’s been so long since your sunlit dream encounter that had she proved only to have been a fantastical, purple clad construct of your imagination, you would have accepted it and carried on.

And yet she is marvelously ordinary, in her boatnecked t-shirt and denim skirt, black leggings fraying just a little and worn sneakers with new laces. Her hair is clumped with hairspray and her foundation flakes at the tip of her nose. She leans her weight on her right leg, just like you, and sucks on her cheek in a way you know will end up leaving tiny sores that sting next time you eat.

You wonder what she sees when she looks at you, if she zones in on the symbol on your chest or the pimple on your forehead, if she measures you both on a scale or places you side by side without comparing.

Her eyes are pink. You are trying to determine what metaphor you would use to describe them – sunset clouds or rose quartz – when her tongue darts out to wet her lips and she opens her mouth to speak.

You are awaiting her words with illogical dread and incomprehensible hope when instead she hiccups, loudly.

“Oops,” she says, and giggles. It’s too shrill, lacks any modulation or control. She shrugs, taking on an air of nonchalance, but you notice the little tremor in her fingers. You frown.

“Have you been drinking?”

She quirks a brow at that, and the way it grates is so painfully familiar it only makes you sad.

“Oh em gee, you seriously just asked me that. Yours is officially the shittiest omniscience forever.” You think you hear her tack an appalling z on the tail end of the last word.  

“You’re not considering the possibility of me being selective with the omnipotence so as not to overwhelm myself for any reason,” you retort, but your heart isn’t in it and you can’t make it cut.

“Okay,” she says, taking a small step closer to you. You take one, too, instinctively. “Omnipotence this:” She sucks her cheek again. It makes her lips look fuller. “What’s it mean that I’ve got you here now?”

Three feet between you – no more. Another tiny step, and you are down to two. You could reach out and touch her, so you do, press the pads of your fingers gently against her arm. She tenses, then relaxes, exhaling shakily as if relieved. Perhaps she has been having doubt as to the durance of your existence as well.

“This means I won, right?” she says. “I won.”

You don’t know what she means. You can’t answer. But you can trace her forearm, you can tangle your fingers with hers when she takes your hand. When she gets so close you feel the tang of alcohol on her breath you can stay, soak up her warmth.

When she leans in to kiss you, you can lean in, too. You can part your lips and pretend psychology as a science has not been invented yet, leaving you with no terms to analyze the way you are rubbing your hands over her back, her shoulders, down her chest.

You close your eyes to give yourself to it, but then she breaks the kiss. She holds your face, your foreheads touching, and her voice is a whisper.

“No, look at me. Never stop looking at me.”

She slurs the words, just a little, pretty and pitiful, and you comply. Kissing her hard and deep, open-mouthed and open-eyed. Her face is a blur, but the pink of her irises like quartz or sun drenched clouds is a vibrant streak of color that flickers when she blinks but never goes out.

You kiss with her hands around your neck.

Your head feels light.

 

 

 


End file.
